House handle: too big for carpenter hatchet head

Rigger's hatchets and half hatchets are sort of a "PRACTICAL tomahawk" and I find them excellent for general farm and utility uses.
 
Whitewood said:
Austin37 asked:
"What exactly makes a rigging ax a rigging ax? Does that mean something of its use historically for helping chop wood to rig cabins or structures?"

As garry3 said, they were used on oil derricks when those were made of wood. The advantage was that you had the axe blade for shaping, with a nail notch for pulling nails. You could also drive a 16d nail with one blow.
During my carpentry apprenticeship in 1977, one of the instructors stated that he didn't allow rig axes on his job sites. That was because one of his men was driving a nail overhead, and when he drew back his rig axe, he hit himself in the forehead with the corner of the axe blade. I'm sure there were many other similar injuries that led to them being banned on job sites.
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Can't say I have ever seen an injury from the blade end of any of the hatchets, rigging, roofing or drywall with the latter two never being banned which is odd if the narrative is hatchet blades are dangerous.

Most injury's I have seen involved nail guns and power saws with nobody calling to ban them.

I did find it interesting that the same dude that nailed his foot to the subflooring with a nail gun was very likely to do it again in the future. It wasn't a hundred percent but ya, keep an eye on that guy.
 
You would think swinging a blade back at your face would make you pay attention to what your doing maybe the heat interrupts your train of thought and I always heard it was a dry heat
 
I have a box full of NOS house axe handles from about 56 years ago, they are all a little bit different, some will fit larger eyes, some will fit smaller eyes. Most all axe handles you buy will need work to fit any one of the million different axe heads laying around without handles. there is no standard for axe eyes or handles and never was. This means when you do things with your hands repairing and working on tools etc., you have to know how to use tools and when to use them to complete various tasks and jobs. Get it?
 
There were standards issued by the railroads and probably some of the larger logging outfits but they were never precisely followed. Plumbs were very close to the standard.
 
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